I'M HIS ALONE

CHAPTER 2

THE DECISION

The Romano estate sat on fifty acres of isolated woodland in upstate New York, a fortress of stone and steel that had been in Dante's family for three generations. The main house was a mansion of Gothic architecture-turrets and gargoyles and wrought-iron gates that screamed both wealth and warning. It was beautiful and terrifying, much like the man who owned it.

Dante stood in his study, staring out at the manicured gardens that were slowly being reclaimed by the autumn rain. His office was all dark wood and leather, the walls lined with books he had actually read and weapons he had actually used. A fire crackled in the marble hearth, casting dancing shadows across the Persian rug. It was a room designed for power, and Dante wore that power as comfortably as his tailored suits.

But tonight, power wasn't on his mind.

Isabella Marchetti was.

He couldn't stop seeing her-those emerald eyes flashing with defiance, that lush mouth trembling with fear she refused to show, the way she had stood her ground against a man who could have ended her world with a word. She was magnificent. She was perfect. And she was going to be his.

The door opened, and Luca entered, carrying a tablet and a file. "Boss. I pulled everything we have on the Marchettis."

"Tell me."

Luca set the file on Dante's desk. "Giovanni Marchetti, fifty-two years old. Former construction worker, current unemployed gambler. Owing money to half the bookies in the city. His wife, Maria, died five years ago-cancer. Since then, he's been on a downward spiral."

"And Bella?" Dante asked, her name feeling like a prayer on his tongue.

"Isabella Marchetti, twenty-three. Full scholarship to NYU, art history major. Dean's list every semester. Works part-time at a campus bookstore." Luca paused, scrolling through the tablet. "Clean record. Not even a parking ticket. No boyfriend currently, though there was a relationship last year with some engineering student-ended six months ago. She's..."

"What?"

"She's completely innocent, Boss. No connection to any of our world. She probably doesn't even know her father's in debt to organized crime." Luca looked up, his expression carefully neutral. "Taking her would be... complicated."

Dante turned from the window, his gray eyes hard as flint. "Complicated how?"

"Legally, morally-she hasn't done anything wrong. She's not involved in her father's debts. If we take her as collateral, we're crossing a line. People will talk. The other families might see it as weakness or desperation. And the feds-"

"I don't care about the feds," Dante interrupted, his voice sharp. "And I don't care what the other families think." He walked to his desk, picked up the file with Bella's photo paper-clipped to the front. She smiled in the picture-some campus event, her arms around a friend, her face lit with genuine joy. Dante's thumb traced over her image with a tenderness that would have shocked anyone who knew him.

"Do you know what it's like, Luca?" he asked quietly. "To build an empire, to have everything money can buy, every luxury, every privilege-and still feel empty? To walk through rooms filled with beautiful women who would do anything for you, and feel nothing? To wonder if the capacity for real desire died somewhere along the way, buried under bodies and blood and business?"

Luca was silent. He had worked for Dante for eight years, had seen him at his best and his worst, but he had never heard him speak like this. Vulnerability was not something Dante Romano displayed. Ever.

"And then," Dante continued, his voice dropping to a near-whisper, "you see someone. Just a glimpse. Five minutes in a shitty apartment in Red Hook. And suddenly, you're alive again. Suddenly, there's something you want more than money, more than power, more than anything. Something you'd burn the world down to possess."

He looked up, and Luca saw something in his boss's eyes that he had never seen before-a fire, an obsession, a madness that was both terrifying and strangely human.

"She's that something, Luca. Isabella Marchetti. I knew it the moment I saw her. And I will have her. I don't care what lines I have to cross. I don't care what it costs. She's mine. She just doesn't know it yet."

Luca nodded slowly. When Dante Romano decided something, the decision was law. Arguing was pointless. "What's the plan?"

"Giovanni has twenty-four hours. He won't come up with the money-he can't. When he fails, we'll collect the debt another way." Dante's jaw tightened. "Bella comes here. To the estate. She stays until the debt is paid."

"And if she doesn't want to come?"

Dante's smile was dark, predatory, and utterly without remorse. "Then she'll learn that in my world, what I want, I take. And I want her, Luca. God help me, I want her more than I've ever wanted anything."

The fire crackled. The rain hammered against the windows. And Dante Romano, who had built his kingdom on logic and ruthlessness, surrendered himself to an obsession that would either save his soul or destroy them both.

---